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How To Video

Extend the battery life of your MacBook

CNET's Dan Graziano tells you how to squeeze the most juice out of the battery in your MacBook Air or MacBook Pro.

3:13 / August 28, 2014

Transcript

[MUSIC]
More efficient chips and improvements to software have helped battery life on Apple's MacBooks to improve with each new model year.
Well, things have gotten better, battery life isn't perfect.
I'm Dan Graziano and it's days How To, I'm going to share with you a few ways to extend the battery life on your Mac Book Air and Mac Book Pro.
Before we get started, you will first want to determine the health of your battery.
The easiest way to do this is to hold down the option key and click the battery icon in the top menu bar.
You were looking for condition of normal rather than a replace soon warning.
If this is the case you will need to replace the battery.
This can be performed at your own risk, or you can bring your Mac in for service to get it done professionally.
The next thing you'll wanna do is enable the battery percentage indicator.
Click on the battery icon in the menu bar and select the show percentage option.
While this won't actually increase your battery life, it'll make it a lot easier to monitor.
If you haven't upgraded OSX 10.9 Mavrix, you should really think about doing so.
The operating systems is much more efficient than earlier versions and can really boost your battery life.
To ensure you're on the latest version of OS X, click on the apple icon at the top left hand side of the screen and select Software Update.
The screen on your MacBook is bright and vibrant.
This is great for when you're connected to a power source, but it takes up a lot of energy when you're not.
I recommend dimming the brightness down below half or to a suitable level for your eyes.
To do this, press the F1 button on the keyboard or if that doesn't work, press the F1 and FN button together.
You should also disable the Macbook's auto-brightness feature.
This can be done by going to system preferences, selecting display and unchecking the box.
All of Apple's aluminum MacBooks include a backlit keyboard.
And as the case with the display, the stronger the backlight, the more energy it's using.
To disable it, press and hold the F5 key or the sn and F5 key.
You can then use the F6 key or the fn and F6 key together to turn the backlight back on.
I bet you weren't counting on a bluetooth mouse or speaker.
Which means there is no point to have bluetooth enabled.
With nothing to connect to, you're just letting it drain your battery.
The easiest way to disable bluetooth is by clicking the icon in the top menu bar.
As is the case with bluetooth, if you aren't actively using a USB connective device such as a flash drive, you should unplug it to prevent battery drain.
To conserve battery, you should also try to avoid trying to charge your smartphone or tablet via the MacBook's USB port.
And last but not least, don't forget to quit out any apps that you are no longer using.
This can be done by clicking on the command and q key while the program is open or click on the name of the program in the top menu bar and selecting quit.
If an app is frozen, click on the Apple icon in the menu bar, select force quit and click on the program that won't close.
For more tips like these be sure to check out howto.cnet.com, you could also reach out to me on Twitter with any questions or comments.
I'm Dan Graziano for Cnet, thanks for watching.
[MUSIC]

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